Tigers fan Natalie Murphy relives last weekend’s Premier League away win at Coventry City
Hull City claimed their second Premier League win of the season at Coventry City(Image: Getty)
Well, that was easy. One home game, one away and two Premier League wins achieved. Plus, the next round of the Carabao Cup secured.
It’s hard to think of a better time to be a Tigers fan, certainly not for this writer of a diary of a Hull City supporter, aged 45-and-a-half.
I’ve followed City since I was a kid, when taking part in a summer football camp at my village primary school earned free tickets to Boothferry.
Despite my loyalty, however, away days haven’t really featured in my commitment to the club.
It was something of a first for me then when, after the excitement and emotion of the Man United match at the MKM, I made the trip to Coventry to see how we would fare against a fellow newly promoted side.
As my son didn’t want to miss the last Hull FC home game of the season, he and the other half chose not to make the trip – I know, I know, you try your best to bring them up right but he’s nearly 17 and taller than me now – so I went on my own.
Tiger Travel seat booked, I wasn’t sure what to expect after seeing an update from Hull City back in January which said that ‘following a number of incidents, the club has taken the decision to provide an official steward on all coaches going forward’.
I’ve no idea what events had led to this and could only speculate on just what those ‘incidents’ – a word that is doing a lot of the heavy lifting in that sentence – might have been.
Better not to know, perhaps, I thought as I turned up at Walton Street car park to take my seat on the bus.
But the friendly greeting from the promised steward set the tone for the day, as did the carefully curated song list chosen by our equally friendly driver.
We set off to the gentle sounds of Elvis’s ‘Can’t help falling in love’, and with plenty of room on the top deck of the comfortable coach, I reclined my seat, stretched out on the footrest and let the world go by.
One pit stop and about three hours later and we arrived. Some confusion at the turnstile as my ticket indicated entry via a home fans area and not the very clearly marked away supporters’ section which is where I headed and successfully scanned in.
Inside, the concourse is underneath the seats, a small, low-ceilinged area that soon filled up and felt like being kettled in an underground carpark. It was basically one big queue so although I wasn’t hungry, I accidentally purchased an early contender for best value snack of the season – a beautifully crafted Hull City themed doughnut that was not only delicious but cost just £2.10.
There was more room in the stands – including a fair few empty seats among the Coventry faithful – but this 32,600 seater stadium felt smaller than ours. Maybe it’s all the Sky Blue everywhere but it had the trying hard but falling short feel of a municipal swimming pool.
Its underwhelming nature is not helped by the location, some distance from the city centre on the edge of a generic retail park.
The best thing about it, apart from being located on the brilliantly named Jimmy Hill Way, is that it’s just three minutes from the M6, so I arrived back in Hull just as the rugby fans were leaving.
They’d seen a defeat but were soon cheered by tales of the City win, like the busting out of a round or two of ‘Mauled by the Tigers’ for this 0-1 victory.
The unwritten rule, as I understood it, was that this was a chant reserved only for when we put at least three goals past an opponent.
That standard was breached at 2-0 against Man United and after generating countless memes, it now seems it will be brought out whenever we take three points in Premier League.
More evidence if it were needed that these really are the good times.